Written By The Victor
by Thuggery
Summary: All enemies may not be what they seem, and neither are friends. Not when the second Cold War has just gone hot. A Modern Warfare 2 novelization.
1. Prologue

Prologue

* * *

"You supply the pictures, I'll supply the war."

-Attributed to William Randolph Hearst

* * *

_**T-Day -43**_

_**09:21:05**_

_**Prague, Czech Republic**_

The guards were discrete, their clothes well-tailored to conceal machine pistols and other covert ways of ending lives. Both men looked completely innocuous wearing conservative business suits. Just two important men of many having a meeting in the middle of the day, one with a gray suit, the other in black. Nothing too unusual to see in the capital of the Czech Republic. However, what they were discussing _was_ unusual.

"The fewer questions asked, the better for both of us," Gray Suit said.

"And the money?" Black Suit asked, taking a sip of his tea and making a face. He hated working in the satellite states.

"It's being wired to your account as we speak. I'm sending the best of my lot. Can your men keep up?"

"Of course. Would you like to hear what we have planned?"

"The less I know, the better. Just remember that he's supposed to be dead."

"I'll make sure of it myself. A bit wasteful though, don't you think?"

"We all make sacrifices."

The black-suited man chuckled. "You'd know about that, eh?"

Gray Suit stiffened. "Bring it up again, and our business is over. I can always find someone else to do the job."

"No you can't," Black Suit said, smugly. "You know it."

"Maybe," Gray Suit conceded. "You have my number if you need anything more."

"Of course," Black Suit said. He got up. "Good doing business, as always."

_If only you knew, smug bastard. I've got your number.

* * *

_

_**T-Day -42**_

_**13:58:23**_

_**Fire Base Phoenix, Afghanistan**_

"Welcome back, sir," Sergeant David Foley shouted over the prop wash and dust thrown up by the landing Pave Low.

"Good to be back, Sergeant Foley," Lieutenant General Steven Shepherd shouted back as he stepped out of the helicopter. "Any trouble while I was gone?"

"Nothing worth telling, sir. Although Major Hassan _would_ like to know why we want his low-scorers to have a final shoot before we get cycled out. I think you might need to have a word with him, Boss."

Nodding to his old friend, Shepherd walked toward the main administration building with the sergeant. Contrary to what most people saw of Afghanistan, Firebase Phoenix and its surroundings were quite green. Some days it looked real pretty and peaceful. The peace was always marred by mortar attacks by Caliphate remnants out for American blood. But that was why they had Ma Deuce and the Rangers.

"How's the up-gunning going?" Shepherd asked as they neared the sandbagged tent.

"The boys are working on the last two as we speak," Foley said. "They're having some trouble with the wiring."

Shepherd had rummaged up spare parts and enough money to pay for what he couldn't scrounge for an up-arming project. The Rangers' HMMWVs needed to be replaced, so he'd authorized an experimental rearmament project to up-armor and update the aging transports as well as mount M134 miniguns with enough battery juice and ammo to keep them running for an hour's fighting.

"Lean on them," Shepherd said, ducking his head to enter the tent. "Same shit, different day," he said, pointing at the maps and waiting officers with a tired grin. "You know what I'm looking for, Foley. Keep your eyes open."

"We've got a new batch hitting the Pit, sir," Foley said, mirroring his smile. "I'll send you the best I find."

It was hard not to like Shepherd. Despite the massive losses his command had sustained five years previous, he remained extremely energetic in his new role in SOCOM. Foley supposed it was the little things that made him so personable. Even though a staff officer of his rank could spend the rest of his career safely ensconced in the Pentagon, he didn't. Instead he was running ops with a hush-hush joint task force and visiting the various SOCOM units. Usually bringing "presents" like replacement parts and new gear along for the trip. He got to know the men as well and remained a qualified shooter despite not having to be. It was the little things like a remembered name, family business, or just the ability to place two overlapping holes dead-center on a man-sized target at twenty yards.

Foley had known him from nearly a decade back when he was just a dead-end specialist in the Tenth Mountain and Shepherd was a SOCOM colonel who needed someone to watch his back for a quiet op in Mazar-i-Sharif. The old man could take a beating and keep moving. He had nothing but respect for the general no matter what some of the others in the service thought. In the interim, he had some Rangers to lean on.

* * *

"Hey, hear me out, okay?" Corporal Jake Dunn said, barely keeping himself from laughing. "So Shepherd's a Terminator. I mean, did any of you see him last month when the hajjis tried rushing the hill? The dude was just fucking _standing there_ with his fucking Dirty Harry revolver and pegging the assholes." He shook his head. "I mean, the rest of us had our goddamn heads down because the fuckers were tossing RPGs like candy, and then I see the General standing there like there weren't any bullets or rockets or shit like that going right past his head! I'm telling you, that dude is a fucking robot sent back from the future!"

"Bullshit," Private First Class Joseph Allen said, grinning over the table at Private James Ramirez. "I say he's a Time Lord."

"What the fuck's a 'Time Lord', Allen?" Dunn asked. "You're making shit up again, aren't you?"

"Watch more TV, dude," Allen said. "Ramirez, you went to college, you ever hear of Doctor Who?"

"Who?"

"Fuck you, man," Allen said laughing, flicking a Charms candy at him.

The three Rangers sat there watching the mechanics finish up wiring up one of their HMMWVs. Just after their lunch, they had finished up one of the training courses for the local Afghani National Army company so they had plenty of time. At least until Sergeant Foley showed up.

"Ramirez! Draw some ammo and ordnance! Frags and five-five-six!" Foley shouted, walking up to the team. "Dunn, go set up the range. General Shepherd wants you at the Pit later. As for you, Allen, you get to be teacher's pet!"

"Well, whoop-de-shit," Allen said, rolling his eyes. "Ramirez! Trade you teaching duty for getting bullets!"

"Hell no," Ramirez said. "I think Hamed _likes_ you," he said, puckering his lips and making kissing sounds before laughing and walking off.

* * *

_**T-Day -42**_

_**14:08:11**_

_**Tian Shan Mountains, Kazakhstan**_

"…So let's get to work, people," General Shepherd finished on the small screen.

"Understood, sir," Captain John MacTavish said. "Please make sure our ride out arrives on time."

"Just keep up your end of the operation, MacTavish, and I'll take care of it. Shepherd out."

Leaning against the boulder, Sergeant Gary "Roach" Sanderson let out a sigh and prepared to get up. They had set up a basic camp at the base of the mountain. Very low-profile visually and thermally. Nobody'd found them even with the heavy patrols, so they hadn't buggered that much up. Now they had a long climb ahead to at least get half-way up the side of the mountain. With his Remington Adaptive Combat Rifle zipped up tight, Roach estimated that he had roughly seventy pounds of kit to be carried up the mountain with him.

"We're burning daylight," Captain MacTavish said, pulling him to his feet. "Let's get moving."

This was most assuredly going to _suck_.

* * *

_**T-Day -42**_

_**15:27:44**_

_**Fire Base Phoenix, Afghanistan**_

With a box of ammunition under each arm, Private James Ramirez almost tripped over an Mk 17 that someone had left in his way. Sidestepping, he walked past the Hesco-barricaded latrines to find the waiting group of ANA troops. These were the runts of the litter. Not necessarily small, but massively unskilled. Ramirez and the others had been putting them through the paces but these guys could barely get through the Pit as a team.

"Ramirez! Come here and show these boys how you reload!" Sergeant Foley bellowed.

"I think Allen's rubbing off on you, Sarge," Ramirez said with a grin as he dropped the two boxes of 5.56 NATO.

Walking over, he picked up the M4A1 carbine on the table. Pulling the charging handle back, he checked the chamber before starting. He personally preferred the Mk 17 whenever he could use it, but the M4 was perfectly fine. Lighter and with ten more rounds. And who cared if "5.56 is weaker than 7.62"? He'd been shot with 7.62 before. The folks he'd shot with 5.56 back with The Big Red One were probably still rotting in the Iraqi desert. The Mk 17 was just a more comfortable shoot for him, so he stuck with that when he could.

"Any time, Ramirez," Foley said, handing him a pair of empty magazines while sitting on one of the range Hescos. "Load and unload for our friends over here. Full speed."

Nodding, Ramirez took the two magazines and loaded the first one while the second went into his front pouch. Pulling the handle back again, he could hear the bolt clicking on an empty chamber with each trigger pull, unable to continue. Making sure that the ANA boys were watching, he extended his shooting index finger to press the magazine release while turning the carbine to the right with a flick of the wrist. His other hand was already grabbing the other magazine from his pouches and bringing it up to exchange for the one slung out of the well. Once the magazine was neatly inserted, he slapped the bolt catch. The dropped magazine would go into his dump pouch when he had the time, but more importantly his hand went back up to grip the forearm of the carbine as he righted it. Combat ready in three seconds.

He glanced at Foley who nodded. Settling the M4 down and putting the dropped magazine next to it, he stepped back and started to unpacked the clips from the boxes.

"You," Foley said, pointing at one of the soldiers. "Question?"

The ANA soldier lowered his hand. "Why are we training with your M4s when we will be using Kalashnikovs?" he asked, much of his accent massaged out after possibly years of working with the American advisors.

Foley chuckled. "_Because_ once you've figured out how to work the M4, your Kalashnikovs will be a snap to use. I want all of you to be able to perform that reload in under five seconds when we're done. Since you wanted to know, you get to do this first."

Ramirez grinned to himself as he stacked up the clips of brass to be loaded into magazines. Foley came off as a serious ball-buster, but Ramirez wouldn't have traded him as a team leader for anyone else in the regiment. The sergeant knew his shit, and he knew it well.

"Hey, Sarge, can I get some range time in, too?" he asked without looking over his shoulder.

"After these chuckleheads are done, Private," Foley said. "And get Allen, he's not getting out of teaching them how to shoot straight."

"Hooah, Sarge."

* * *

"So just as we're getting out of the Humvees, the dude comes out with an RPG, right?" Allen said, his hand waving in the air in vague circles. "Starts waving it around?"

"Yeah?" PFC MacDonald Hall asked, grinning as he leaned against the side of the HMMWV.

"So then the LT _freaks_. He had to be some sort of JSOC cherry, right?" Allen laughed. "So he comes up to my team and practically starts screaming at us." He assumed a higher-pitched voice. "Do something! Do something!"

Specialist Matt Summers leaned over the turret, shaking his head. "You're shitting me."

Allen shook his head, wheezing from his laughter and partially doubled over. "I shit you not. This dude's about a second from completely spazzing. So Foley's looking at this guy like he's the Section Eight we all know he is, and then he brings his rifle up to fire. Except this _idiot_ forgot to take it off safe!"

Hall and Summers started laughing, Summers almost rolling off of the top of the HMMWV in convulsions.

"And get this," Allen said, wiping tears from his eyes. "We look at the dude like he's fucking high or some shit, trying to squeeze the trigger all wide-eyed. He looks at Foley and he's like, 'My weapon's jammed!' and tries to take his! I swear, the Sarge was _this_ close to just punching the guy."

"Oh God," Hall said, shaking his head. "So what happened to the dude with the tube?"

"We sponged the guy and searched him," Allen said. "Turns out this dude was the local distributor. Heroin, hash, whatever." He nodded. "He'd been hitting his own merch. That man was so fucked-up on whatever that he probably thought-"

"You're not going to get out of hearing Sarge say 'Aim down your sights' for seven and a half hours," Ramirez said, walking up with his Mk 17 cradled in his arms. "Sooner you get that done, sooner I can get some range time."

"You're getting too much time on the range," Allen said with a lazy grin. "I think you can out-shoot most of the D-boys by now."

"I just need to out-shoot you, buddy," Ramirez laughed. "Get the pain over with already."

"Yeah, yeah." As Allen walked away, he turned to walk backwards for a parting shot. "Hey, Ramirez, tell those jokers about that time Dunn drove us onto the farm! Feathers _everywhere_, man!"

He saw Ramirez shake his head. "Aim down your sights, Allen!"

* * *

_**T-Day -42**_

_**11:42:13**_

_**Georgian-Russian Border**_

Whistling "Serdtse," Vladimir Rostislavovich Makarov carefully reassembled the M4A1 carbine in front of him. His plans were coming into fruition now. Just a few more days and he could pick the fruits of his labor right from the tree. He rather liked how things were coming together now, with all of the gaps of his plan being filled. It was good to be the man with the money. It let him purchase all sorts of things. Like the carbine that he had just put back together after a thorough cleaning.

"Hey, Big Chief," Viktor Ivanovich Kuznetsov said, walking into the kitchen with the zippered black duffel. "Finally got the last shipment."

Makarov grunted, setting aside the carbine. "Good, I just got the finalized arrival times. Pull up a seat, Viktor Ivanovich. And grab two bottles."

He unfolded the floor plan of the target and accepted the cold bottle of Baltika. The map had already been marked up with his previous notes, but there was plenty of space for more. Makarov had worked with Kuznetsov before his forced retirement from the Spetsnaz. Both men had fought in the long and bloody campaign to pacify Chechnya, and had gravitated to the Ultranationalist cause after the political decimation of their troop. They brought much-needed tactical insight to the cause, only to be ejected again for their beliefs.

But soon the ones who had lost their way would learn a lesson in blood.

"So what do we have so far?" Kuznetsov asked, leaning sideways for a look. "We're going to be inserting through the service tunnels, right? How are we exfiltrating?"

"Same way," Makarov said. He pointed out the first leg of the route. "We'll start from the top and work down. How long do you think it'd take for us to walk twenty meters?"

"Shouldn't be too hard." His old NCO rubbed his chin. "We're going to be doing this one like Shali? Because you get points for style for that one, Big Chief, but there were deductions for common sense that time…"

"As long as the point gets across," Makarov said, punching Kuznetsov's arm playfully. "You find a crew? I think I've got one guy aside from us."

"A few. _Bratva_. Just means more guns to find for them."

"Look on the bright side you crusty bastard, it means more guns on our side when we're in the field." Makarov twisted opened his bottle and held it up. "To Imran Niktovich."

_To all of our sacrifices_.

Kuznetsov smiled, clinking his own bottle against his. "To the happy time, may it come again."

* * *

_**T-Day -42**_

_**15:39:48**_

_**Fire Base Phoenix, Afghanistan**_

"Aim down your sights!" Foley shouted, grabbing the forearm of the M16A4 and jerking it up with the stock. "Private Khalid, how do you plan on shooting if you can't shoot straight? Were you not paying attention when Private Allen was demonstrating?" He snorted. "And where the hell is your sling?"

"Sir?" Khalid managed, looking at the Ranger sergeant.

"What the fuck happens if your buddy gets shot? You need to help him! So where does your rifle go? Up your ass?"

"No, sir," Khalid said, visibly paling as he pulled the sling on.

Foley glared at the ANA private before grabbing his own Mk 17. On semi-automatic, he shouldered it and fired a rapid cadence. Each shot knocked down one of the targets as he acquired and dropped each one in turn. Twenty targets, twenty rounds. Lowering his rifle, he ejected the empty magazine and nodded to Dunn when he walked over.

"Got the Pit set up, boss," Dunn said.

"Allen, guess you escaped this time," Foley said. "General Shepherd's looking to tap a shooter from our company. I expect top-notch scores, Private."

"Cool, Sarge," Allen said, getting up from his seat on the table.

Allen and Dunn walked away from the target range for the close-quarters battle range that the Rangers had dubbed the "Pit" owing mostly to its sunken placement. It was nearly complete modular in nature and sported some pretty slick electronic monitoring systems. Until General Shepherd had started to visit Phoenix recently, they had been using lightly-urbanized layouts for squad-level practice. His arrival usually wound up with a reconfiguration for single-shooter operations in a whole variety of settings.

"You going to use the M4?" Dunn asked as they walked through the daily basketball game. "Ow!" he shouted as the basketball bounced off his non-issue vest.

"Yeah, get some more maneuverability out of it," Allen said as Dunn flipped off Corporal Rob Bowling as he returned the thrown basketball.

"Get off the court, dude," Bowling shouted.

Ignoring him and the other Rangers, they finally walked into the staging area of the Pit. After a few years, the edges of the explosively-carved pit had been worn down. However the banks of televisions showing footage from throughout the course hadn't needed to be replaced except the one time when a Caliphate mortarman got really lucky. Dunn sat down at a computer terminal and tapped in the clearance code, the gate leading into the Pit proper unlocking with a buzz.

"Hey, listen, dude," he said to Allen. "Heard this from the big chieftain himself. If you manage to pull this one in under a minute, he'll probably pull you for whatever special op he's doing."

Allen grinned as he opened up one of the weapon lockers. "You jealous, Dunn?"

"Hey, we make a great team," Dunn said, shrugging. "Hate to lose you to the prima donna squad." He grinned. "'sides, I'm aiming for the unit."

"You got the helmet down already," Allen said as he pulled out an MP5K to show Dunn. "Okay, who the hell stocked this thing? There's a 240-Bravo, a Glock 18, and an M79 here as well."

"I don't know, man. Shepherd, probably. Guess it's supposed to show what kind of shit you might see as battlefield pick-up."

Allen pulled out a chromed Desert Eagle, snorting in disbelief. "Where're we fighting? Hollywood?"

Chuckling, Dunn settled into his seat. "We done here, Ranger? I think Shepherd wants to see some action before he croaks."

"Yeah, yeah, starting my run," Allen said, readying his carbine.

Dunn saw him kick the gate open, and so the game was on. He toggled the first set of targets. Time to see if he'd make it…

* * *

_**T-Day -42**_

_**15:34:29**_

_**Northwest of Asadabad, Afghanistan**_

Standing behind the turret of the M2HB, Specialist Dominic Getts desperately wished he was either a few inches shorter or preferably not even in-country. He didn't dare let up on the trigger as they bounced along the potholed road. The heavy machine gun's spade grip rattled in his hands as if it was trying to slip loose. But he kept his grip, his thumbs jammed down to maintain his fire.

"How close are we?" he shouted below. No response. He tried again. "How close are we to camp?"

Giving up on that endeavor, Getts returned his full attention to suppressing the insurgents. The M2HB was able to be accurately ranged out a mile or so, but he was dealing in knife-fighting ranges with the technical coming up the convoy's flank. They'd be the last through the gates of the camp, but first in line if some wise guy had the idea of hauling out an RPG. Hunching over, he reacquired the repurposed Toyota pick-up and swung the sights over the hood with the Browning still firing.

The .50 BMG is capable of, in common parlance, "fucking your shit up." Each "ordinary" round carried enough kinetic energy to horrifically maim any human being regardless of any armor they might wear. They had loaded up with armor-piercing ammunition for this patrol. He could see the tracers for a brief second before the whipsawed rounds burrowed through the grille and hood of the truck. They made easy work of the engine block as well, but their energy was hardly spent, their work incomplete. After punching through that, the rounds then tore through the dashboard and gas well to tear apart the fighters within. A fine red mist coated the windshield even as Getts swung the turret to the left to engage the next technical trying to edge in on the action.

How had things gone so terribly wrong? The company had gone out to investigate reports of Caliphate insurgents in Asadabad. That had hardly gone accordingly to plan. Making the first cross-over across the Pech River, they had been unopposed right until they hit northern Asadabad and the Asadabad Bridge. The buildings around them had practically exploded with gunfire. Casualties started piling up almost immediately with all of the bullets and rockets flying.

Four of the HMMWVs had been sent back with the wounded, but that hadn't been a guarantee of that casevac convoy's safety. His turret's shield probably looked like a lunar landscape from all of the fire directed at it. Thank God for the up-armor kits and small miracles. But the bullets were still flying, and ducking only made it worse with the near-constant hissing of the rounds passing overhead. He was quickly running out of ammunition, and the tangos just kept popping up. They needed to get back to base before it was-

It felt as if someone had grabbed his head and slammed it back. Getts heard rather than felt his helmeted head bounce off the lip of the gunner's nest. He couldn't feel a thing as he righted himself. A hand went to the top of his head. His fingers immediately found the tear and gouge where the bullet had torn through. Small miracles indeed.

Managing a startled chuckle, he resumed his fire to-

This round was much less miraculous. Getts's knees buckled underneath him as he dropped through the port to land crumpled on the body of Private Jamal Peters, blood pouring from the partially-crushed left side of his head.

"Man down! We've got a man down!"

* * *

_**T-Day -42**_

_**15:40:08**_

_**Firebase Phoenix, Afghanistan**_

"Not bad, my man. You made that course your bitch!" Dunn whooped, clapping. "You sure you don't want to go over that again? Hate to lose a man to the prima donna team."

Taking off his helmet, Allen took a breath. The last ten meters had really taken it out of him even with his lighter "garrison" loadout. He didn't think he did that badly, but it wouldn't beat the records set by some of General Shepherd's "prima donna" men. Hell, he'd seen two of them breeze through set-ups intended for squad-level maneuvers on their own. They made him look like he was wading through molasses.

As he set the carbine down, the general alarm rang. It was hard not to recognize that dreaded sound. When it rang, to say that something bad had happened was an understatement. It had only rung twice before while the Rangers had been stationed there. Both times had been to prepare to repel local insurgents.

"All Hunters, get to your Vics! We're heading out!" Sergeant Foley's voice crackled over their headsets. "Allen, Dunn, get the hell over here!"

"Yeah, we copy," Dunn said, picking up his Mk 17. "Come on, dude!" he shouted to Allen.

The two Rangers climbed out of the Pit to find a scene of utter desolation. Four HMMWVs shot to shit, bullet holes turning most of them into sieves on wheels. Tenth Mountain from what little of the identifiers could be recognized. Soldiers were offloading the wounded and dead that had been piled up inside the vehicles like cords of firewood. Dunn grabbed a Mountain soldier as he climbed out from his HMMWV.

"What the hell's going on?" He could make out "Arnett" and a sergeant's chevrons on his vest through the blood. "What's going on, Arnett?"

"The-they blew the bridge," Arnett mumbled, shivering and wide-eyed. "We gotta move! We gotta get the guys out!"

Shock. Letting go of him, Dunn looked around. There had to be at least a dozen wounded, likely more dead. An ambush?

"BCT-1 company's trapped across the river in the red zone! We've lost contact with them!" PFC Tim Walden shouted as he bounded out of the commo shack while pulling his gear on. It was well-known fact that he'd come to the Rangers from the Tenth Mountain. "Gear up and get going!"

Finding Foley was simple enough. He was one of the few calm spots in the roiling mass of Rangers and Tenth Mountain soldiers. Barking orders and tossing equipment left and right, he gestured for Allen and Dunn to head over to their HMMWV where Ramirez was already waiting.

"Get in your vehicles! We're moving out!" he bellowed to everyone else.

"Rifle?" Dunn asked, glancing at Allen as they jogged toward their vehicle.

"In the Humvee," Allen said before patting the M4. "Gimme a second," he then said, jogging away toward the range. Returning shortly without the carbine but with several spare magazines and a handful of forty-millimeter grenades, he nodded to Dunn. "I'm good."

"You'd better be," Dunn said, walking around the HMMWV to open the driver's side door. "Hey, hold on to this one," he said, handing back his Mk 17 to Ramirez as he sat down. "And get on the gun, will you?"

"Copy that," Ramirez said, grunting as he levered himself up into the turret. "Hey, I think I like this arrangement! Minigun's pretty sweet!"

"Watch how much ammo you're putting out," Sergeant Foley said, walking over to the HMMWV. He rode shotgun as per regulations, his own Mk 17 pointing out of the window. "Hit it, Dunn."

When General Shepherd's voice came on, Dunn could feel his eyebrow raise involuntarily. "All Hunters, roll out."

"Rolling out," Dunn confirmed, his words echoed by others over the radio.

With a basso roar, the convoy's engines turned over and they drove out of the firebase, ready to pull some men out of the fire.

* * *

-

* * *

* * *

**Author's Rant:** Well, got bored enough and this sprung out like a malignant tumor. As a note, I've ditched the "Day" stuff from the game since it's so ridiculously unrealistic. I think you'll like my new day notation system a bit better once you figure out what it means. As usual, expect the story to be pretty damn grim. Also as usual, all input is welcome.


	2. Chapter 1

"The real war will never get in the books."

-Walt Whitman

* * *

_**T-Day -42**_

_**15:53:47**_

_**Red Zone, Afghanistan**_

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are now entering the Red Zone. Please keep all arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times," Corporal Jake Dunn drawled as he rolled the HMMWV over the bridge and past a shot-up technical. "If you'd look to your left and to your right, you'll notice MAMies welcoming us with open arms and RPGs…"

"Corporal, eyes on the road," Sergeant David Foley said, his eyes flicking over possible ambush positions.

At the front of the convoy, Hunter 2-1's two HMMWVs would the first in line for a hot HEAT exfoliation if any of the local Taliban or Caliphate forces were lying in wait. Driving along the northern bank of the Pech River, there wasn't much clearance for their trucks. However, there was some awful pretty countryside around Phoenix. Too bad they spent more time preempting mortar attacks than admiring the scenery. But it was there, and certainly very pretty.

Summer was just rolling around, so the sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and they could hear the sound of gunfire and explosions echoing down the valley. At least there weren't fighters actively engaging the convoy right then and there.

Each up-gunned HMMWV had sacrificed carrying capacity for an ammunition feed for their M134s as well as battery packs. Yet despite this, each truck carried barely enough ammunition for an hour of staggered fire. They were looking at seriously limited fire support from that angle. However, there _was_ local air. But air support had a tendency of going bad even with the strobes that they were issued. Smoke marked positions, but it wasn't necessarily the position that needed to be saturated with fire.

"This is Gold Eagle Actual. Listen up," Lieutenant General Steven Shepherd's voice said suddenly in their headsets. "You will move in within a hundred meters to relieve the elements under fire at the bridge. Hunter elements will dismount and move up to supply coordinates for Warlord."

Dunn glanced over at Foley and tapped his headset. "Did he just hand us the orders I think he did? Wouldn't it be easier if we-"

"We lead the way, Corporal," Foley said before straightening slightly. "Possible contact to the right. Two o'clock. Across the river."

"On it, uh, looks like a body BCT-One hit," Allen said, his binoculars pressed to his eyes. "That's a negative on the contact. Sarge, that's a dog you're seeing. Just trying to get a meal in, it looks like."

Korangal's shape tended to play holy hell with tactical-level communications. Only as the convoy neared the mouth of the valley did they begin to hear the frantic radio chatter between the BCT-1 elements. Maneuvering past another vehicle carcass, Dunn sighed and tried to tune out the shouts for assistance. The road was lousy with these burned-out or shot-up vehicles. Either some of these geniuses had decided to chase the Humvees which were universally packing M2s, or they had tried to take on the BCT elements. And the last Dunn had seen, those guys had headed out with armor. It seemed like a pretty damn multiple-choice question to him.

Gradually the clutter on the road thickened until Dunn wound up ramming his way through a pair of toppled and still-burning trucks.

"I don't think these dudes _really_ need our help," he said. "Looks like they've got all of it well in hand."

"Keep driving, Dunn," Foley said. "And don't hit those-"

Even through the thick appliqué armor and the improved suspension, they could feel and hear their HMMWV roll over and through a veritable thicket of corpses. There was a sickening wet crackle as bones were crushed underneath their wheels. Foley sighed.

"You just can't fucking win."

Dunn shrugged. "Hey, no other way through them, Sarge. Either through them or we ram another one of their technicals."

"Yeah, well-" Foley's words were cut off as his eyes went wide. "RPG!"

A gout of earth, metal, and fire erupted to their right with a thunderclap. Dunn immediately twisted the wheel to the left, slinging everyone inside of the HMMWV to the left in their restraints. For the person riding on the web sling with half of his body exposed on the other hand…

"You crazy fuck!" Ramirez bellowed, banging on the roof as he tried to untangle himself while trying to catch his breath after getting his waist slammed hard against the side of the ring. "Steady the fucking Humvee! I'm going to juice that fucker!"

Ramirez turned in place, clutching the spade grip tightly as he lined up his shot. Contrary to common belief, the M134 minigun is easy one of the most accurate support weapons available. Firing a brisk five thousand rounds a minute, it was like aiming some sort of sci-fi laser weapon. You didn't have to aim. Instead you just adjusted the point of impact until you were fairly certain the target was getting juiced.

Rapidly spinning up, the minigun droned for a second as Ramirez pulled the trigger. Empty brass casings poured out and tumbled down the right side of the Humvee. The second burst was just insurance, the rounds mangling the corpse. But that extra burst kicked the proverbial hornet's nest. Almost immediately, more rockets and tracers streaked out from the underbrush to explode dangerously close to the convoy vehicle as well as throwing up dust and scoring the heavy armor of the HMMWVs.

"Gold Eagle, this is Hunter Two-One, we're taking some fire up here," Foley said remarkably calmly into his headset microphone. "Dunn, you'd better put that lead foot down on the pedal if you want to see your girlfriends again!"

* * *

"Gold Eagle Actual copies, Hunter Two-One," Shepherd said, his attention diverted between the FBCB2 screens as well as the still-open roof hatch of the M1130 CV Stryker. "Go to thermals," he told the gunner. "You see anything looking hostile, do not hesitate to engage."

At his nod, Shepherd returned to monitoring the progress of the convoy. The thermal sensor's feed wasn't particularly surprising once combined with the satellite telemetry. There were a dozen massed contacts moving along ratlines. Almost before he registered this, Shepherd heard the gunner mutter under his breath before the mounted Mk 19 above them started firing back at the ambushers.

"Contacts, contacts! Three and nine o'clock!" the commander, Staff Sergeant Mick Laibach shouted over the common frequency. "Engaging, sir!"

Shepherd only grunted over the dull thumping of the automatic grenade launcher as he worked. The vehicle commanders needed to be patched into his feeds and quickly in order to engage. But they were working well without the input, Sergeant Foley in the lead Humvee picking up speed. The rest of the convoy was mimicking him in an effort to get out of the killzone even as their gunners opened up. This had barely a percentage chance of fucking up. He was more concerned for the men they were going to be hauling out of the fire. But something still needed to be done.

"Warlord, this is Gold Eagle. Requesting close air support for Hunter elements," he said as he uneasily rubbed his thumb on the hammer of his non-regulation Colt Anaconda. "Streaming coordinates."

"Uh, copy that, Gold Eagle," the voice of Lieutenant Colonel Levin Harris said. There was an audible pause as the Air Force officer examined his orders from his post in Bagram Air Base. "That's danger close, Gold Eagle."

"Understood, Warlord. Drop on my authorization. I think we can trust our pilots, don't you?"

"Copy, Gold Eagle," Harris said. "Warlord out."

* * *

The first of the AGM-114 Hellfire missiles landed a little too close for comfort in the middle of a rock outcropping that had been spraying fire on the lead Humvee. Now it was mostly aerial gravel and some half-burnt rags flying through the air in front of the blast wave that rocked the convoy. Whoever was manning that Reaper corrected quickly, the next missile landing that much farther away from the convoy. But "farther" was a relative concept, particularly with anti-tank weapons. Especially when there were four MQ-9 Reaper UCAVs making passes of the ambush with a dozen Hellfire AGMs each.

Each detonation was marked by a sudden rush of hot wind that would shake even the heaviest vehicle of the convoy like a toy. The explosions threw dirt, shattered rock, broken weapons, and partially-mashed body parts into the air to occasionally land on a startled Ranger manning a turret. And the insurgents' bullets still flew; the tracers even more visible with the gray-brown backdrop provided by the debris.

"Jesus _Christ_!" Ramirez shrieked, keeping his head as low as possible while still firing in short bursts and brushing a bloody rag off of his helmet. "Go, go, _go_!"

Practically in the middle of the storm, Hunter 2-1's two Humvees plowed through the wrecked technicals with bullets scarring their armor and the detonation of nearby RPGs jolting them around. Behind the lead, the second team of Hunter 2-1 caught an RPG to their right side. Their HMMWV listed to the left with flames jetting out of the blackened doors. No time to stop or reflect on losing half of their squad. If there were survivors, they'd have to wait until the rest of the convoy had pushed through the ambush zone or obliterated the ambushers.

All of the Hunter gunners had been familiarized with the miniguns during the initial renovation of their HMMWVs. They knew the abilities and limitations of the weapon system, and now they were putting them through their paces in a live combat situation. As the Rangers spearheaded the movement, their miniguns laid staggered bursts down on enemy positions, minimizing power and ammunition consumption. But these second-long bursts were enough to shred flesh and make anyone's day a bad one.

Dunn had to actively wrestle with the wheel as they rolled along a narrow part of the path. Loose gravel tumbled down into the river below as they continued pushing through. The glass on the windows were beginning to show wear, the recently replaced alumina windshields starting to show scratches with each bullet that spent itself against them.

As a point of irony, the decibel levels inside of the HMMWVs were significantly higher than levels outside. The Rangers' Mk 17s were a hell of a lot louder than the M4s and M16s they had carried before the switchover. Combining the report of the 7.62x51mm rounds inside of the confined space of the Humvee and the droning of the minigun above them, all of the Rangers became instantly grateful for their sound-dampening headsets.

Tracers streaked back and forth, the insurgents firing on the Rangers and then having their fire traced back by the momentarily-visible streaks. Those pockets of fire were quickly and efficiently extinguished. More RPGs exploded near the trucks and armored vehicles, rocking the lighter ones with each detonation. At times all either side could see was a wall of gray-brown dust, fire, and bullets.

With the heavier armor bringing up the rear of the convoy, the ambushers were quickly given a hurting they wouldn't forget. Even as the Hunter vehicle elements rolled out of the ambush, the Tenth Mountain's organic Bradleys and Strykers behind them opened up on the remaining enemy positions with their Bushmasters and Mk 19s. "High Roller," part of their new organic M1A3 Abrams assets, was rolling with impunity down the narrow path behind all of them. Its main gun fired intermittently, engaging targets with canister shells while its "secondary" weapons spat lines of fire to ravage the already-hit insurgent positions. In minutes, the situation was ended most definitively. Any ambushers who'd survived weren't likely to try attacking again. Now there was another issue.

* * *

Inputting new orders, Shepherd keyed his mike. "This is Gold Eagle Actual. All Hunter elements, dismount and proceed on foot with Seeker One, Two, Three, and Five and Sword Two. Sword One will assist Seeker Four in casevac of wounded personnel. Stalker elements will escort casevac."

"Hey, Steve," Colonel Will Davis said, tapping his shoulder from his station. "You mind letting me handle the ground situation?"

"Sorry," Shepherd said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Force of habit, I guess." He unbuckled himself from his seat and looked around. "I think I'll get some air," he said.

He headed over to climb up and out of the Stryker, ignoring the look that his ground coordinator gave him. Grabbing an M4, he headed for the Hunter vehicles.

* * *

"Fucking Caliphate," Dunn said as he pulled his gear out of the HMMWV. "Don't those idiots remember us kicking their asses five years ago?"

None of the other Rangers said a word as they pulled what gear they needed or thought they needed from the shot-up HMMWVs. A number of them were still jumpy from the ambush even with security already established. They would be leaving their comfy Humvees for a half mile march into an active combat zone, likely under more fire. There were also gaps in their line-up. Some of the Rangers hadn't made it through intact, some of them wounded by enemy fire or incapacitated by plain concussions from the explosives that landed too close or clipped their vehicles. At least they had the Mountain elements to count on.

But Dunn's question was still quite an interesting one no matter how few people actually paid attention to him. The Caliphate had been dealt a massive blow five years ago during the Azadi War when their leader had nuked a whole load of them along with a joint British-American military force in the Azadi capital city. Survivors of the Caliphate movement had been scattered into the winds of the region. Internal security forces in said region tended to make short work of the troublemakers. Except in the perennially lawless areas. There they settled into the cracks with some loose ordnance and a mile-long mean streak.

In Afghanistan's less-than-civil regions, those Caliphate fighters found friends in the local Taliban cells. The combination was like throwing napalm onto live thermite. What had been previously sporadic fighting had become much more regular and less sporadic. Hardened fighters receiving much better training thanks to their new friends were that much harder to root out of the mountains. Despite "Mountain" being a vestigial title, the Tenth Mountain had quickly re-earned their name and prior specialty working alongside the Rangers.

"Okay, move out, Hunters," Foley said as he waved for the Afghani National Army element to fall in behind them.

With the afternoon sun shining down on them, the combined unit of Rangers, Mountain troopers, and ANA soldiers headed out along the trail, still wary. It wasn't actually as warm as the official forecast had stated, and the wind carrying the odor of expired human and half-burned propellant cooled them some.

"Thermals?" Foley asked Dunn with a raised eyebrow as the team fell in behind him.

Dunn shrugged, tapping the thermal camera mounted to his helmet. "Ain't hot enough to throw it off yet. It'd be nice to find some way of strapping it to my rifle, though."

"Duct tape?" Foley suggested with a snort. "Now eyes front."

Even with the clutter of dead bodies and shot-up vehicles, they still made good time out into the first of the fields of northern Asadabad. They could hear the sounds of the fighting much more clearly now as well as the actual sights. The occasional lines of tracers fired into the air and explosions marked out the fighting better than any electronic monitoring system. They had a long walk ahead of them.

* * *

Nosing past another wreck, Corporal Timothy McDaniels could barely feel the uneven terrain that he was driving his Stryker through. In his opinion as a long-time vehicle wrangler, it wasn't necessarily a good thing. It was certainly nice not being bounced around all the goddamn time. But he'd been trained back when having a smooth ride wasn't necessarily a good thing either. And with the rollover risk presented by his vehicle, he'd preferred if things were a little more tactile than a little computer warning him about tire inflation.

Someone needed to get the casings swept out. The remotely-operated M2HB had sprayed a hell of a lot of brass into the interior of the Stryker thanks to a fucked-up ejector and deflector. But that wouldn't have been a problem if the circulators hadn't been fucked-up as well. So there they were with a layer of warm brass rolling around the floor of the Stryker.

He noticed the ANA soldiers loading the grievously wounded and dead into the HMMWVs that he passed, likely heading back to base. Damned shame about that. But he had a mission like the men he was following. The staggered double column of infantry stretched out to the edge of the city from what he could tell. But they'd be horrifically exposed without armor to support them. And they were being practically cut in half to provide escort for the casevac.

"Hey, how much ammo do we have left?" he shouted back to Staff Sergeant Kim Weston.

"Enough," the barrel-chested Weston replied as he kicked some of the casings away from his seat at the remote weapon station. "I wish they'd let us try out those miniguns."

"You'd only get us reprimanded with those lead fingers of yours," McDaniels said as he slowed to allow a litter pass. "Four thousand RPM. You know how fast the Deuce fires?"

"Trick question, right?" Weston asked with a snort.

"Not if you read the books, no," said McDaniels. "Five hundred and seventy five RPM for our mount. And remember how we need to _reload_ every time we get contacts? Remember the crates?"

"You're just annoyed that you got busted down to Corporal," Weston said, his grin practically audible even when McDaniels wasn't looking. "Y'know, I have to say that you couldn't have _not_ seen it happening."

McDaniels groaned good-naturedly. At least he'd been allowed to crew with a buddy after the demotion. That hadn't been pleasant, but neither was having a CO whose catchphrase seemed to be "What was that?" and usually accompanied by rolling into a straight shitstorm of bullets.

"Hey, if it wasn't me, it was going to be someone else," he said. "That cherry was going to get all of us fucked over. Now could you please pull overwatch for the crunchies?"

Rolling up the gentle slope of a hill, he finally got a good view of Asadabad. It seemed like there'd be nowhere else in the world with a city quite like the one he was looking at. Not exactly _pretty_, but it was situated nicely. The mortar-chucking insurgents tended to drive property values down though.

"_Whoa_!" Weston shouted suddenly. "Dude, check it out! Is that Gold Eagle Actual? Ten o'clock and coming up."

Grunting noncommittally, McDaniels slowed down and leaned over to glance in the mirror. _Holy shit!_ His jaw went slack as he saw General Shepherd calmly walking up the column of soldiers with an M4 and that silver revolver of his. There had been stories about the man, but nothing was quite like actually seeing him in person. Particularly when he was walking as if he hadn't a care in the world. He wasn't even wearing a vest, let alone an IOTV or any of the shit that his Rangers carried for protection. The General was definitely crazy but he made up for it with some of the best shooting this side of a graduate of Sniper School, and he had brass ones the size of the world. Not too shoddy at all.

They were getting closer to where the BCT elements were holed up, judging from the ragged lines of unit indicators flashing on their FBCB2 monitor. Passing another knot of wounded, they finally reached the front of the convoy where more National Army soldiers were starting to get into the Hunter HMMWVs.

"Hey, you guys want to put the pedal to the metal up there?" Corporal Charles Lipton asked over the radio suddenly. "We're in fuckin' ambush alley right here."

"Just wait, Bigfoot," Weston said as he leaned forward and sideways to slap McDaniels's arm for him to go faster. "You want to run our own boys over? Fine by me."

"Yeah, well you've got fuckin' _guns_ and we don't, Hashmark," the driver of the M104 Wolverine said. "I don't know about you, but I ain't too keen on being shot at again. We got thirty-nine of these things left, and I wanna keep it at that nice high number."

"Yeah, yeah, swing left at first opportunity then," Weston said before pausing for a second. "Okay, I'm getting reports of sporadic mortar fire up ahead."

McDaniels sighed and leaned forward slightly as if to brace himself. This was going to suck.

* * *

_**T-Day -42**_

_**17:34:25**_

_**Tian Shan Mountains, Kazakhstan**_

Grunting, Sergeant Gary "Roach" Sanderson pulled himself onto the ledge next to his captain, John MacTavish. The snowfall had only been getting thicker the further up they climbed. It was already a bitter cold at seemed to cut at what little exposed skin they had with a vindictive glee. And yet further they climbed. But for now it was time for another break. They wouldn't be having any tomorrow. Shepherd had been quite clear about the schedule they had to keep to.

At least they could take a breather now. However, their chosen rest stop looked like it might crumble with a strong wind. And that would thoroughly ruin their day. Squatting down and unslinging his pack, Roach quickly found his canteen and unscrewed it to bring up to his lips. It was beyond ice cold and his eyes teared up from the sudden shock as his throat constricted. He'd be definitely keeping the water and electrolyte slurry closer to his body so it wouldn't be like trying to drink liquid nitrogen.

"Bracing," MacTavish said as he screwed his own canteen shut after a long drink. "Been meaning to ask you something, Roach."

"Ask away, sir," Roach said, slipping his canteen into his drop mag pouch.

"You were with Braddock in JTF 2, right?"

"Toad? Yes sir," said Roach as he pulled a Clif Bar out of his pocket and unwrapped it for a bite. "Problem?"

MacTavish shook his head. "Nothing vital. I was just wondering your own views on the nickname the boys gave you."

"It fits, sir," Roach said, chewing on the half-frozen bar while looking out at the landscape sprawling out below them. "I've been shot and blown up more often than an American rapper and I'm still around."

MacTavish chuckled and clapped his shoulder, shaking his head. "Seriously, though. Your track record's exemplary, but a few of the evaluators a bit worried," he said, sobering. "Four operations gone pear-shaped in a row? Some of the boys are saying you're either lucky or cursed to be the only one to make extraction every time. We're worried, mate."

Roach glanced down at his gloved hands for a moment. The captain had a point. He supposed his brain was wired differently. There had never been survivor's guilt with him. Just the end of another mission either successful or not. Casualties on his side never seemed to register beyond a factual and objective view.

"Well, sir, I rather like the name," he said. "And if they think _I'm_ crazy, and I joined this chickenshit outfit, what does that say about _you_?"

That got a response. MacTavish nearly tumbled sideways into the drift, convulsing in near-silent laughter.

"I'm _definitely_ saving that one for the headshrinkers," he managed as he gasped for air.

Fifteen minutes later, they resumed the climb towards the objective.

* * *

_**T-Day -42**_

_**15:59:59**_

_**Northern Asadabad, Afghanistan**_

"-Say again, we are taking accurate mortar fire from across the river!" Sergeant Foley bellowed into his mike. "Requesting support right now!"

Dug in around the edge of the shore, the combined Hunter and Seeker elements finally linked up with the main body of the Brigade Combat Team. But then there was the problem of what had hit the BCT in the first place. The Pech wasn't particularly narrow, but neither was it particularly wide. In simpler terms, it meant that the bullets being sprayed at them were only partially aimed. It still meant that there were a whole shitload of bullets addressed to "whom it may concern" though. And that meant that they were keeping their heads _down_.

Foley and his team had found shelter behind a low wall a dozen meters from the actual shoreline with the blown-out bridge on their far left. Intermittent waves of fire would spray their cover like windswept rain. RPGs hissed overhead, and unfriendly shells were landing dangerously close. The worst part of even the smallest mortar tended to be the fact that there was no way of marking its passage. One moment you were looking at a buddy a few meters away. The next moment, without pomp or circumstance, they had been seemingly replaced with an explosion of gray dirt, flame, and concussive force. There was no warning, no cinematic hiss or whine. Whatever stuff the insurgents were using might have been "small," but they were still dangerous. Particularly since the fuckers had taken the time to pre-sight their position.

"Jesus," Dunn muttered, brushing away the crumbly gray-black dirt that had landed on him from a particularly close mortar strike. "Any chance of catching a break here?"

"Focus on shooting the fuckers," Allen shouted, popping up to snap off a shot before ducking back down. "Sarge, you want some forty on them?"

"You're a damn mind reader," Foley shouted back to him over the rapid hissing of bullets passing just overhead. "Ramirez, Dunn, suppress _now_!"

The three Rangers rose in unison, their Mk 17s barking as they supplied suppressive fire for Allen. More brass casings littered the ground around them as they hammered one section of the improvised defenses on the other side of the river. Car doors don't stop handgun-caliber rounds, and they certainly don't stop full-power 7.62x51mm NATO slugs.

Allen's round fell a bit further than he had intended, detonating against the side of a building but still spraying shrapnel every which way.

"Any Hunter command elements, get over here!" someone shouted over the radio. "By the lead Humvee!"

"Great, and where the fuck's that?" Dunn griped as he fired again.

Foley slapped his shoulder, pointing out the bullet-scarred but still-legible decals on one of the HMMWVs closer to the shore on their left. Behind it were hunkered a fireteam from the BCT.

"Best of luck, Sarge," Dunn said with a more-than-slightly manic grin as he patted him back. "I am _not_ sticking my head out for a run!"

Ever since Staff Sergeant Matt Cole had been sent to Germany with a shattered leg, Foley had been brevetted to command Hunter 2-1 in addition to his own team. And it looked like the commander of the BCT element wanted his attention. No time to waste then.

"Ramirez, with me! Dunn, Allen, keep up the fire!" he shouted, his voice already going from a combination of the constant need to yell as well as all of the fine particulate sticking to his throat. Glancing at Ramirez, he pointed out a relatively deep shell crater. "You move first to that crater over there! We'll provide covering fire! Once you get there-"

"I'll cover you! Yeah, I know the drill!" Ramirez shouted back as he leaned out to fire. "Just tell me when!"

"Okay! Go!" Foley yelled, pushing Ramirez out. "Cover!"

Surprised, Ramirez stumbled for a second, his arms pinwheeling before he steadied himself in his sprint of cover. He could hear his team firing behind him even as more rounds skipped off the ground around him as he dashed for the crater. His Mk 17 swung about and smacked him in the jaw as he twisted to dodge around a piece of a car somehow embedded in the dirt. Diving for cover at the edge of the crater, he rolled onto his belly while gripping his radio's transmitter.

"I'm set! Go!" he shouted.

Foley's words were audible even with the gunfire. "Bounding!"

Another mortar shell landed close by. Each time there was a brief moment of overpressure like someone had hit them with a mild electrical charge. Then the thunder that would knock the unwary off their feet. Undeterred, Ramirez and the rest of the team opened up on the opposite bank as their team leader sprinted for safety. At slightly closer range, it was easier to make out the fall of the rounds against the insurgents instead of relying on tracking the small puffs of dust and debris against the dark shapes moving around. After what seemed like an eternity, Foley dropped into the crater next to him.

"You okay?" Foley asked him as he pulled his drinking tube out for a sip.

"Yeah, just dandy," Ramirez managed, wide-eyed as he felt and heard a round zip right past his head. "Where next, Sarge?"

Foley pointed out a shell hole a few meters to the right of the commander's vehicle. "Over there! Give me cover, I'll go first!"

"Copy that!" Ramirez shouted as he flipped his rifle's selector to automatic. Propping it up against the edge of the crater, he slapped Foley's arm. "Go!"

His sergeant burst from the mediocre cover as he squeezed the trigger. The Mk 17 chattered as he walked bursts back and forth between the distant muzzle flashes. Keeping his focus on the opposite bank, he paused for a moment to get a bead on someone who kept popping their head up every few seconds. A burst to the head quickly put an end to the likely spotter with a faint pink mist. Resuming suppression, he could barely hear Foley's shout when he had reached the next piece of cover.

"Okay, Ramirez! Come on!"

"Bounding!"

Getting onto his feet, Ramirez made the mistake of taking a deep breath. He could practically feel the airborne dust and grit as they flew in on his inhalation to cling to his mouth and throat. Spitting, he kicked off in a sprint for the shell hole that Foley was now tucked up in. This time the gap was smaller, and there were noticeably fewer people shooting at him as he ran.

Dropping into the shell hole, he spat out the last of the dust and pulled his hydration pack's drinking tube out for a long sip. The water had long gone lukewarm, but at least it was potable water. Catching his breath, Ramirez glanced over at Foley who was sorting through his magazines. It looked like he'd already used three magazines. One of the drawbacks of the Mk 17 was the fact that the fobbits never seemed to get around to sending them the extended magazines that they had been promised. Twenty rounds was more than enough for most situations, but the Rangers always seemed to be getting into unconventional situations that necessitated putting as much lead down range as possible.

Tucking away the drinking tube, he checked his own magazine. Two rounds. Tucking that magazine away, he pulled a fresh magazine off of his chest rig and loaded it. Ready to go.

"Okay, let's see what this guy's asking about," Foley said, pulling himself out of the deep crater. "Come on, Ramirez!"

Following his sergeant, Ramirez crawled out of the shell hole. He kept his head down as they dashed for the relative safety of the shot-up HMMWV the BCT commander was hiding behind. They found the men sitting around what appeared to be an FBCB2 module torn straight out of the Humvee, one of the soldiers occasionally leaning out from cover to fire a burst across the bank. Two of them were busy shouting into radio sets. And the commander sat in the middle of it all looking vaguely bemused.

Foley reached them first, letting his rifle bang against his side as he crawled up and knelt with the group.

"Ramirez, help that man!" he shouted, pointing at the soldier who was still firing before reading the commander's tags for a name and rank. "Captain Newell, Hunter Two-One here!"

The captain's eyes instantly focused. He grabbed Foley by the arm and shouted in his ear, "Good to have you, Sergeant!"

"What's the situation, sir?" Foley shouted back, straining to be heard over an RPG that spent itself a meter away from them.

"It's all fucked up!" the captain yelled. "They have maybe three or four mortars, a dozen RPGs at least! Only favor they did was blow the damn bridge! We'd be overrun otherwise!"

"Don't worry, sir," Foley said. "I think we- What the _fuck_?"

* * *

Captain Jonathan Newell turned to see what the Ranger sergeant was looking at. His own eyes went wide as he saw _Lieutenant General Steven Shepherd_ calming striding through the storm towards them. Mortars landed dangerously close to him, bullets hissed past his head, and yet he did not flinch. He didn't even pick up his pace as he drew closer. He was like a time-worn god of war on the battlefield, directing any confused soldiers in his way to one point or another to supply better fire across the river. There was no hesitation in his movements as he walked over to kneel with the huddle behind the Humvee. And there was also no noticeable grime on his ACUs either.

"What's the hold up?" he shouted over the gunfire. "I've got supporting armor elements ready to roll in!"

"Uh, General Shepherd, sir!" Newell stammered as he scrambled to make room for him behind their cover. "The bridge was blown, and we've-"

"What's with the goddamn bullshit?" Shepherd shouted. "Move your men over _there_, _there_, and _there_," he said, pointing out three new locations. "Concentrated fire from those positions! I got a Wolverine on call, so I don't want to hear any more of your goldbricking! Get your men rearranged!" He turned to scan the battlefield. "You've got MGS Strykers? Pull them back over _there_!" He pointed back at what used to be a farmhouse. "Prepare to receive reinforcements! Are we clear?"

"Yes sir!" Newell shouted before turning to his radio operators to relay those orders.

* * *

"I think you forgot your helmet, sir!" Foley shouted to Shepherd with a grin while the captain was repeating orders. "Shouldn't you be back there with the command unit?"

"Thought I'd stretch my legs!" Shepherd shouted back. "How's your team?"

"Doing okay! Where do you want us?"

"You like front-row seats?"

Foley shook his head, still grinning. "Is that an order, sir?"

"Do you need to ask, Dave?"

"Sir, I mean this in the most respectful manner, but you are one crazy bastard!" Foley shouted, laughing. He keyed his radio. "Dunn, Allen, I want you guys to displace forward!" He turned to look over at Ramirez. "Ramirez, link up with Dunn and Allen!"

Ramirez backed off, giving him a thumbs-up. "You got it, Sar-" He managed a strangle cry as he fell backwards. "Jesus, I'm hit!" he shouted. Rolling onto his unwounded shoulder, he managed to crawl over. "It's not too bad," he shouted as he slid up against the HMMWV.

"Medic!" Foley shouted.

Foley knelt down to take a look for himself. Whatever had hit the private had just narrowly slipped past the main trauma plate. Blood was already soaking the gray-green ACU from the wound, the scarlet stain growing exponentially with each passing second. Foley pulled Ramirez's vest open and checked the wound. Just below his clavicle and above the scapula. A hand slipped under his back revealed a clean through-and-through.

He pulled his medical kit open and took out one of the QuikClot pressure bandages along with a roll of gauze only to be gently nudged away as a medic dropped in.

"I've got this, Sergeant," Staff Sergeant Evan Dennison shouted as he took the bloodied still-wrapped packages. "Look after the rest of your team, he's going to be fine!"

Shaking his head, Foley backed off. He scanned the field and quickly found what was left of his fireteam slowly advancing. Goddamn reins of command. He didn't mind taking on additional responsibilities, but he was a team leader at heart. A squad was at most what he could stomach commanding. Or at least that was the most he could command without micromanagement. As if remembering, he turned back trying to spot the rest of his squad before he remembered the sight of the smoking HMMWV.

He watched the men reorganizing themselves in front of him, shifting to new positions in controlled chaos as they received new orders, augmented by the incoming Rangers and Tenth Mountain soldiers. There was sporadic cracking probably a quarter kilometer away, the rounds passing high overhead into the opposite bank. Those would be the Ranger marksmen slowly thinning out the insurgent spotters with each shot.

Foley stuck with Hunter 2-4, making their way over to the middle position by the bridge, and keeping their heads low as they advanced through the fire. Shells fell sporadically, knocking sprays of hot dirt around and occasionally stumbling one of the Rangers. Eventually they made it to the relative safety of a Mobile Gun System Stryker. Relative meaning of course that the Stryker would protect them from small arms fire but drew mortars and anti-armor like a magnet.

He saw Dunn and Allen approaching him, moving quickly from cover to cover when the MGS fired. One moment he was squatting next to a Stryker and watching what was left of his squad converging on him. The next, it felt as if he'd been dropped into an ocean of searing heat, blinding light, and absolute pain. His ears rang with the report of the gun system, the hair on the back of his neck prickling from the overpressure. It felt like his skin was two sizes too small as the Stryker rolled back slightly to absorb the recoil, even more dust being blown into his face.

"Dunn! Allen! Get your asses over here!" he shouted, coughing as he waved them over.

The ground between them was suddenly churned up by a string of miniature explosions that ran up the bank into the ruined buildings behind them. Soldiers shouted in surprise with several of them barely managing to escape the explosions.

"BMP on the other side! By the gray and green buildings!" someone shouted.

There was a high-pitched whirring as the MGS reoriented its turret, and Foley had scant seconds to brace himself before the gun discharged again. A dozen meters away, another MGS fired simultaneously. Foley finally saw what they were firing at a second before it detonated. A single layer of bricks did nothing to stop an APFSDS round, neither did thirty-three millimeters of rolled homogeneous armor. The battered BMP-2 that had taken the shot was violently retired with a tungsten penetrator through the crew compartment and another through its autocannon magazine. The cook-off was visible to even the snipers still engaging spotters.

Things quieted down for the moment following the destruction of the ancient armored fighting vehicle. Or at least nobody was slinging high-caliber weapons for the moment. When Foley looked again, Dunn was almost on top of him with Allen a few meters back.

"Miss me?" Dunn asked as he slid in behind the Stryker, bumping his helmeted head against the tan armor as he righted himself.

"Like the clap, Corporal," Foley said before shouting at Allen, "Allen, get over here right goddamn now!" He glanced over at Dunn. "You figure that if he's carrying that damn M4, he'd run a little faster," he said with a wry smirk to Dunn.

His amusement disappeared when Allen disappeared. It was like a gigantic fist had come down in the form of a mortar shell, blasting apart even more of the dirt and throwing up a plume that quickly settled to reveal a still form lying on the ground. Foley felt as if icy claws had gripped his gut.

_Not again.

* * *

-

* * *

_**Author's Rant:** So I decided to update this one out of schedule, mostly because writing this one is a whole mess of fun. As a side note, I realize that C2 warfare features a lot in all of my stories. In my defense, it's what's current, and it allows for some more interesting twists as you'll see later on. I'll probably get around to updating Pinnacle Wraith soon. See y'all in the funny papers.**  
**


	3. Chapter 2

"Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result."

-Winston Churchill

* * *

_**T-Day -42**_

_**16:09:15**_

_**Northern Asadabad, Afghanistan**_

Watching his forces rearrange themselves from behind the hood of one of the HMMWVs, General Steven Shepherd raised his M4A1 and snapped off a set of shots at the insurgents, or Taliban, or whatever the fuck they were calling themselves, across the river. The Rangers who had appointed themselves as his bodyguards saw a pair of the local fighters tumble with those shots. Not too bad for an old man who wasn't exactly supposed to be behind a desk. They were still fairly distant from the fighting, but it wasn't stopping the mortars on the other side from saturating their fighting positions.

He saw Private James Ramirez from Sergeant David Foley's squad go down practically next to him with a wound to his arm. Nothing life-threatening from what he could see, but it would certainly be incapacitating. He was quickly taken off the line despite loud objections of the obscene kind. Shepherd scanned the ground in front of him as his armor started rolling in to bombard the dirt-worshipping Caliphate forces. He needed to get up closer to get a better view of things. There. He saw a Humvee fairly close to where he had been issuing orders to the BCT captain.

"Over there," he said, slapping the shoulder of one his "bodyguards" to draw his attention to the Humvee. "On me!"

* * *

Sergeant First Class Samuel Sawyer nodded as he continued firing. He glanced over at Staff Sergeant Oliver Killian "Go, Ollie!"

Killian kept pace with Shepherd, also keeping his body between the general and the shore in case someone had a brainwave to shoot the old guy who wasn't wearing armor or a helmet. The mortar fire was becoming more sporadic but it didn't mean it had stopped. Killian was nearly thrown off his feet by a nearby mortar strike but managed to regain his footing. He could hear Sawyer behind him as they ran for cover. Intermittent volleys of enemy rifle fire would throw up dust around them as the distance seemed to stretch on forever.

Dropping in behind the wheel wells, the three men caught their breath.

"Hey, Sam," Killian said, panting. "Where's Wellings?" he asked, referring to Sawyer's lieutenant.

"Back there," Sawyer replied, pointing back at one of the rocky outcroppings that seemed to be a combination rubble pile and trash heap where a half dozen wounded Rangers were being collected for casevac. "Okay, sir, where now?" he asked Shepherd.

"Stay here!" Shepherd shouted. "Maintain-" A mortar landed close by, interrupting him. "Maintain your position here! We're going to-" Another mortar. His head turned like a turret before stopping. "Suppressive fire now! Over there!"

Both Rangers opened fire in unison, emptying their Mk 17s with controlled bursts to keep the shooters on the opposite bank behind cover. Free to move, Shepherd walked almost casually over to one of the mortar strikes where one of the Rangers from Hunter-2 had been unlucky enough to be right next to. Killian looked back for a moment as he fired. Allen, not exactly new meat, but he'd heard stories about the guy. He didn't look too bad. At least he had all of his parts in one piece.

The two Rangers could hear Shepherd shouting to Allen as he pulled him to his feet, "Get up, Private Allen! Rangers lead the way! Move!"

Smirking at Killian, Sawyer jabbed a thumb back at the general. Neither of them figured that the old man would be one for clichéd phrases. Who'd have thought? Both men continued firing, laying down a blistering counter-barrage to the other side of the river.

* * *

"Targets, over on the left!"

The sound of the M2 going off over their heads was deafening. Corporal Tim McDaniels tried his best to weave through the gunfire as his Stryker's gun returned it. He could hear Staff Sergeant Kim Weston cursing the sky blue behind him as he worked at his weapon station. The bullets seemed to come in waves, which was an improvement over the ambush they had previously suppressed.

But now there were mortars added to the mix. They would explode close by, rocking the Stryker with each blast. Sometimes they were close enough to really knock McDaniels and Weston around in their vehicle. And other times it was far enough that they only felt a tremor through the suspension. Either way, Weston was busy providing pinpoint saturation with the Browning above them. A commander would occasionally come onto the channel and request their help with suppressing a trouble area. That required a quick realignment of both the turreted heavy machine gun and the vehicle itself before they could dispense supporting fire.

Behind them, the rest of the armored convoy was deploying as quickly as humanly possible. The bridge was visibly blown out leaving barely a few feet of structure on either side. Their bridgelayer, Bigfoot would have to be protected at all costs. The Pech wasn't particularly deep here even at the mouth, but it _was_ fast. Their Strykers and Bradleys would likely be easily swept away or overturned by the current. And that meant that the infantry had a snowball's chance in hell of just wading across.

Weston hammered up a cloud of dust as he dropped a burst of rounds on a sniper position across the river. The fifty-caliber rounds tore up the masonry, chewing giant chunks out of the buildings and depriving the sniper of his cover and his life if the vaguely pink splash mixed in the dust showing up on the shared monitor was any indication.

"Keep Bigfoot in the fight!" Captain Neil Hanratty bellowed over the radio, the staccato chatter of his Brad's coaxial filtering through as well. "If they can't deploy, we are not going to be rescuing anybody!"

"Well, you heard the captain," McDaniels said, imitating Hanratty's gravelly Alabaman good ol' boy accent. "Okay, putting down the brakes," he then said, slowing to a halt next to the triage area steadily filling with casualties. "This is Sword Two-Five. Have reached the waypoint," he reported on the radio.

He drummed a hand on the armrest of his seat. Waiting, especially this sort of waiting, wasn't his strong suit. Another wounded Ranger was wrestled past the Stryker's windshield, this one with what looked like a bullet graze to his shoulder. It was deep enough to require off-line attention, but not deep enough to keep the private from trying to sock the guy helping him along. McDaniels itched to be in the fight one way or another. He wasn't feeling particularly picky. Anything was better than just _sitting_ there.

"You mind if I head topside?"

"Go ahead," Weston said distractedly as he hosed down another position. "Stay on comms. Who knows when we'll get a move order."

Grabbing his M4, McDaniels unplugged his helmet from the Stryker's system and replugged it into something more portable. He pushed open the top hatch and was almost smacked by the swinging barrel of their M2. Steadying himself, he brought his carbine up and tried to find a target. There. The recoil pushed the stock against his coveralls as he brought down his first target. Not too bad. Good thing there were more…

* * *

_**T-Day -42**_

_**15:32:17**_

_**Moscow, Russia**_

"Hey, Vanya, I think he looks just like his Daddy, doesn't he?"

Ivan Timofeyevich Granovsky smiled and nodded as he took another sip from his bottle of imported English ale. They met every year at the same pub mostly as a commemoration of times and comrades long gone. None of the patrons around the men knew who they were, and they preferred to keep it that way. Half a decade ago, the six of them had been amongst the deadliest of the deadly in the Russian military. Spetsnaz GRU. Of course, that had been before the Ultranationalists had taken power.

Now they were six men nearing middle age, drinking themselves to death. But there were still moments to give them hope. Granovsky's boy had been one of them. He was the first of them to have a stable life after departing the service. The others had been mostly drifting between jobs and mooching off each other in less than flush times.

The door of the pub opened, and a three-man _militsiya_ patrol walked in. While the patrons barely even noticed them, the six men almost unconsciously prepared for a fight or flight. Ever since the Ultranationalist Party had gained the majority in the government, it was as if they were just dusting off the old stockpiles. Old was new when it came to revitalizing Russian pride, _tovarisch_. There was a point of being too nationalistic and being too immersed in the past though. Having the _militsiya_ wear something uncomfortably similar to their old Soviet uniforms might have been part of it. And then there were the disappearings that were happening again.

"Any news from the sergeant?" Boris Vasilyevich Gorunov asked quietly.

"Haven't heard from him in months," Granovsky said just as quietly. He raised his bottle again. "To absent friends."

"To absent friends," the others echoed.

* * *

_**T-Day-42**_

_**16:11:43**_

_**Northern Asadabad, Afghanistan**_

"Hunter Two, keep up the fire!" Sergeant David Foley shouted to his platoon even as he prepped a forty-millimeter grenade. "If Bigfoot gets hit, we're swimming!"

His Mk 17's underslung grenade launcher fired, kicking the stock against his shoulder. Foley saw the round arc and strike a hardened machine gun position that had been hosing down his Rangers. There was a plume of smoke and flame as the gunners crewing the DShK were torn to pieces by the high-explosive round. Technically the Rangers were supposed to be issued EGLMs for their Mk 17s instead of chopped-down M203s, but then again Afghanistan was supposed to be pacified, so Foley supposed that was how things evened out. As long as he could bring down the hurt with a grenade launcher…

As he continued to lay down fire to drive back and suppress the shooters, Foley didn't give any sign that he noticed as Allen dropping along the embankment next to him. Immediately, the private started to add his fire to the storm, using his own underslung grenade launcher to drop shell after shell onto the insurgent positions.

"Miss me, Sarge?" Allen asked as he reloaded his M203.

"Like the clap," Foley said, firing. "What took you so long?" he asked as casually as he could.

"You know me," Allen said. His grenade launcher fired again. "I decided to take a nap, Sarge."

The two Rangers kept up their fire with rounds passing right over their heads. Empty magazines and still-smoking grenade casings surrounded the two of them, distinguishing them further from the other soldiers around them. It was a only matter of time before Allen had emptied his supply of forty-millimeter grenades and tapped Foley's shoulder.

"I'm out of forty-mike-mike, Sarge!" he shouted as a fresh torrent of rounds tore up the berm they were taking cover behind.

"Take mine," Foley grunted, pulling his own grenade pouches off of his body armor and handing them over to the private. "I'll be back. Need to check on Dunn."

"You got it, Sarge," Allen said, pulling open one of the pouches to reload his launcher. "Covering fire for Sergeant Foley!"

The other soldiers picked up their rate of fire accordingly, providing enough suppressive fire to keep Foley safe from the majority of the shooters. M249 SAWs, M16s, M4s, and Mk 17s came together in a wonderful cacophony. He raced for Corporal Jake Dunn's position along the berm only to find an ANA soldier there, plugging away with his Kalashnikov.

"Dunn, where the hell are you?" Foley practically shouted into his headset's microphone as he dropped behind the berm. "This is Foley, where are you?"

"Hut, back twenty from the berm," Dunn's reply came, accompanied by the amplified crackle of 7.62 NATO being fired in a confined space. "Getting eyes on the emplaced positions."

"I see you," Foley shouted. "Coming over!"

He felt a hot tearing pain as a bullet grazed his arm as he started to run for the hut that Dunn had taken cover in, but he kept going. No time to bleed. It said something about the amount of fire being dropped on them when the ground was exploding in puffs of dirt and smoke around his feet. Idiots. All they needed was a two-finger lead, but Foley wasn't about to jinx his luck.

The hut that Dunn had found shelter in was another mudbrick construction like most of the older buildings in the valley. One of the MGS Strykers had positioned itself a few meters back from the building and was banging out shell after shell. Someone had evidently damned acceptable collateral damage and called open season on the opposite bank. Foley threw himself through the doorway to avoid a self-destructing RPG warhead. He felt the blast of heat followed by needle-thin shrapnel that peppered his legs and tore up his pant legs. Rolling onto his feet, he looked around the darkened confines of the hut.

Fire from the other side of the river would occasionally whizz through the long-since shot-out window looking at the opposite bank and knock chips of brick and clouds of dust into the air. Coughing, Foley stayed low like three men inside the hut were already doing. He spotted Dunn closest to the window with his binoculars. Next to him were Technical Sergeants Ybarra and Adams, their platoon's combat controller team. Dunn would pop up right after the MGS outside fired to glass the opposite bank before relaying data to the combat controllers.

"I think I found the spotters! Grid two-five-two-one-seven-one!" Dunn shouted excitedly to the two controllers. "White twelve-story apartment! You can't miss it!"

"I see it, Jake," Ybarra said, craning his head to confirm. "Hold one." He slapped Adams's backpack before pulling out a ruggedized laptop. "Just getting the rig!"

Foley crawled over to them, staying low. He watched the combat controller open the laptop and start inputting commands. Part of their new kit received a year ago, the drone rig was mostly just an improvement of already-existing FFW tech. Slaved to the laptop was a Class I UAV which was flying a pre-programmed path high above the battlefield. It provided an excellent source of live intel, but there was one thing in particular that the controllers and their Ranger hosts loved about it: a gimbal-mounted laser designator. Diet SOFLAM. Half the weight, all the tasty target-designation.

He looked over Ybarra's shoulder as the controller scanned the rooftops. The screen would routinely blur as the technical sergeant checked out likely points of fire. Ybarra quickly found the building that Dunn had found. Foley watched as he performed a quick sweep of the surroundings. Flying high to avoid ground fire, the UAV could only pipe in an overview of the area. But that would have to be enough. The rooftop wasn't so much swarming with enemies as it had a sizeable infestation on the side facing the river.

"Warlord, Warlord," Ybarra shouted into his radio as another RPG smashed into the side of the hut. "This Hunter Two JTAC! Requesting air on grid two-five-two-one-seven-one! What do you have for us?"

Warlord's voice came in clear despite the heavy fire. "Hunter Two JTAC, this is Warlord. Solid copy. I, uh, have Devil One, flight of two F-15s."

"Sounds great," Adams shouted. "Put them on!"

The mudbrick wall seemed to flex as it took another RPG round, but it held even as pieces of shrapnel flew through the window. Undeterred, the controllers continued their work. Foley crawled into a position at the corner of the window across from Dunn.

"How're you doing?" he shouted to Dunn.

"Not too bad, Sarge!" Dunn shouted back as both of them got up to fire. "How's Allen?"

"Gave me a goddamn heart attack back there!" Foley shifted his aim slightly as he talked. "He's fine!"

"Out-fucking-standing, Sarge!" Dunn called, suddenly cracking up. "Man, this is like one of those shitty war movies!" he shouted, grinning like a maniac. "Jesus! I live for this shit!"

Foley shook his head. Dunn wasn't flaky, but he tended to find something funny in almost every situation. Focusing on his shooting, he tripped one of the insurgents with a round to the ankle. A lucky shot. A mortar shell landed close by, met quickly by the MGS dropping another round into the buildings. He saw one of the buildings finally topple. It seemed to buckle after a shot lanced through it, the plaster-covered walls flexing before crumbling and dropping the upper stories to the street.

Something a bit higher-caliber than the Kalashnikovs suddenly splintered the lower portion of the remaining window frame, spraying the men with wooden splinters and dust.

"Shot. One o'clock, high," a tinny voice reported from one of the other laptops set up in the hut.

"You heard the owl," Foley grunted. He carefully looked over the edge before ducking back down. "I got nothing! Dunn?"

The corporal stuck his head up before ducking down just as another round tore his thermal optics off its mounting on his helmet. "I see him, Sarge!" he reported, wide-eyed and with a broad grin still plastered across his face. "Pretty exposed, on the red and white three-story!"

"I know it," Foley responded, readying his rifle for full-automatic fire. "I'll handle it."

Popping up, he already had his sights on the building before he even spotted the shape of the likely sniper. A caress of the trigger sent half-dozen rounds downrange. They raised a momentary cloud of dust as they impacted against the ledge of the roof. Behind them, a fifty-caliber rattled. What had been a ledge was suddenly chewed into gravel and gore with a momentary puff of red that was visible even with the falling debris. No more sniper problem.

But there were plenty of other problems that needed addressing. At least the fighters weren't using human shields. But they didn't seem to be running out of reserves any time soon. A DShK heavy machine gun opened up on the hut, its heavy rounds rapidly eroding the rock-solid mud bricks. Already Foley could feel the vibrations of the impacts through the wall.

"This is Hunter Two-One," he rasped into his headset's mike. "Calling anyone with eyes on that Dushka. We're being hammered here!"

"Hunter Two-One, this is Devil One-One, tally one heavy machine gun-equipped technical," a new voice said. His tone of voice and that irritating Yeager drawl gave him away as their incoming air support. "Confirm new picture. Devil One-Two is shooter for commitment. We'll handle the hostile. Guns."

* * *

The F-15E Strike Eagle hails one of the most easily-recognizable lines of American fighter craft. While the classic F-15 had originally been designed as a pure air-superiority fighter, the Strike Eagle had been a relatively recent development in the mid-1980s as a ground-attack strike fighter. What this entailed was a complete revamp of its armament. Instead of the F-15's pure loadout of air-to-air missiles, the Strike Eagle could carry everything from the traditional Sidewinders to bunker busters to the B61 nuclear bomb. But those weren't germane to Devil One-One's current job.

What _was_ germane, on the other hand, was the twenty-millimeter M61 Vulcan rotary cannon that it carried. Captain Christopher Mann and his WSO First Lieutenant Harvey Syzlack had a suspicion that their HARMs weren't going to be useful for targeting a Toyota pick-up with a Soviet-era heavy machine gun mounted in the back. And dropping one of the JDAMs would be outright overkill. So, the Vulcan it was.

At an altitude of barely a thousand feet, Devil One-One was well within range of triple-A. But the anti-aircraft fire relied on being able to _see_ the target. And that was something the locals manning the machine gun couldn't do since they lacked even the most rudimentary targeting systems. They had no idea what was coming.

They made one pass low and fast from east to west, walking the tracers up through the buildings and into the technical. Two seconds on the trigger and they had gone to afterburners before they could make their own visual confirmation. But the radio chatter told them all that they needed.

* * *

It had been as if the sky had suddenly split open and poured death onto the insurgent positions from what Foley and Dunn could see. The F-15 shrieked overhead, its Vulcan flashing like a momentary light on a fast-moving blur. But the effects of the high-explosive shells were no illusion. Shattered pavement had been thrown into the air accompanied by pieces of mangled bodies. The technical had ceased to be, shredded by the rounds before its perforated gas tank finally ignited. There was a sudden lull on the opposite shore as the fighters processed what they just experienced.

"Outstanding guns!" Dunn whooped punching the air as the fireball dissipated into the air.

"Yeah, yeah," Foley said, getting up off his knees. "I'll go check on- Contact, tangos on the bridge! Far side!" He scrambled out of the hut's door and shouted to the other soldiers manning the berm, "On the bridge! Ten o'clock high! We've got multiple targets!"

Dropping back onto a knee and again thankful for their issued knee pads, Foley started firing again. The insurgents advancing on the bridge were pretty brave, and pretty stupid. At the warning, almost half of the soldiers had shifted their fire onto the other end of the blown-out bridge. Their fire blasted away at the raw concrete and sparked off exposed rebar to throw up clouds of dust that partially obscured the fighters but not their muzzle flashes.

Like little momentary flashlights in the gray-brown dust, the insurgents' fire gave away their positions. If they didn't insist on rock and rolling on the trigger, they might not have had the problem. But Foley wasn't the complaining type. The fewer bullets aimed at him, the happier he was. There was a puff of smoke and fire as someone dropped a forty-millimeter grenade onto the oncoming insurgents, followed shortly by agonized screams as shrapnel cut into flesh. Another grenade ended those complaints.

More and more fire was poured onto the horribly-exposed fighters on the bridge. The previously pinned soldiers took their revenge as the dust-blinded insurgents stumbled into their field of fire. It seemed like everyone with a grudge against the American presence had decided to make a poorly-timed showing. Foley could see several fighters emerge from the smoke and dust at a time only to be torn apart by a flurry of semi-automatic fire. He could hear the crackle of the ANA's Kalashnikovs as well, slower than their usual automatic. A smile crept across his face. Well, it looked like they were finally aiming down their sights.

* * *

"Come on, patch me up quicker!" Private James Ramirez snarled as the medic worked to cinch up the dressing on his shoulder. "Spike me and go!"

It hadn't been bad enough to pull him off the field and he was thankful for that. But it had been messy enough that the medics had to pull him off the line to get his wound plugged up. A dash of QuikClot and a dressing would've done the trick, but the medic had insisted on being more thorough with the wound. Damned thing had been a through and through and he could still move his arm reasonably well. Now if only the sawbones would let him get back on his feet…

"Stay still, Private," the staff sergeant working on him snapped as he finally cinched the dressing. "You're lucky it didn't nick anything vital. Try hard not to exert yourself before we can get a better look at it on-base, huh?" Pulling an autoinjector from his vest's PALS loops, he pulled the cap off with his teeth and slammed the tip in next to the wound.

Almost immediately Ramirez felt a rush of relief as the drug payload poured into his system. Wardrug. There was pethidine to manage the pain, modafinil to take the edge off the pain-killer and keep him in the fight, epinephrine to get him going as well as lengthening the absorption time of the pethidine, and a whopping dose of blood sub to oxygenate the cells. The cocktail was not unlike some of the combinations favored by insurgents to keep them moving despite massive physical trauma. Its development had been a joint British-American effort that had debuted during the Second Russian Civil War. It all came together to get the young private wide awake and more than ready to kill.

Seeing Ramirez grab his Mk 17, he gently but firmly pried it out of his hands and replaced it with his own M4 carbine. Pulling an orange sticker off of the autoinjector, the staff sergeant slapped it on the collar of Ramirez's body armor. "You're in no shape for that," he said, picking up the heavier rifle and turning to check on the other wounded. "Ramirez, right? I'll return this when we get back."

Grumbling his assent, Ramirez got up and steadied himself against the side of the Stryker that formed one of the walls of the casualty collection area. There were roughly two dozen wounded men laid out around the improvised collection area, some with wounds that needed immediate casevac. Rangers, Tenth Mountain, and ANA alike had been torn apart by the fire and shrapnel. Their blood stained the dirt, mingling in the soil of the land they sought to pacify. If he'd been the poetic type, Ramirez might have found some symbolism from that fact. But he wasn't. He was a Ranger, and he had a weapon. And that meant he was still in the fight.

Skirting around the Stryker, he found himself with a gentle rolling hill that partially obscured his view of the battlefield. A Ranger sniper team had set up shop just behind the crest and was firing a round every few seconds at an unseen enemy. Dropping down next to them, Ramirez rolled onto his back and performed a quick brass check as a mortar landing on the other side of the hill blasted even more dirt into the air to land around them. Patting the dirt off his RAV and blowing out the dirt that had landed in the chamber of his carbine, he rolled over again to get a good view of the target area, not even wincing as he rolled over his wounded shoulder.

"What do we got, what do we got?" he asked, resting the handguard of his new carbine against the rising earth.

The spotter of the team glanced at him and shook his head slightly and tapped the side of his neck when he resumed searching out targets for his shooter. Ramirez saw the man on the rifle shrug slightly before firing again. Men on Wardrug tended to be viewed as a more than slightly unstable resource. Excellent line-holders, but you didn't want them doing the tricky bits, which nicely summarized the role of special operations forces. Neither men of the sniper team spoke to him as they continued their work.

Shrugging off their snub, Ramirez settled his cheek against the stock of the carbine and took a look down-range.

The gun run by the fast-mover had thinned out the herd a bit. Something car-shaped was burning and throwing up a lot of smoke doing it. But there was still plenty of movement to be seen. Plenty of _targets_. Ramirez didn't need the prompting of his sergeant to fire on the insurgents on the other side of the bridge. Foley's voice was almost like an annoying gnat in his ear as he shouted for everyone to open fire on the targets. Licking his chapped lips, Ramirez could taste dried blood on his rough and cracked lips.

First target was coming out of the smoke and dust raised by the guys' fire from down below. His rounds impacted low. Adjusting his aim, his next burst stitched a quick spray through the fighter's lower torso. Then the others got to him. An M240B's long rattling burst sawed off his right arm at mid-bicep, a few rounds tearing the Kalashnikov in his hands apart as well. More rounds impacted, blasting up a pink fog as the man was literally torn apart. But by then Ramirez had moved on to another target.

* * *

"They're retreating!" Corporal Dunn shouted excitedly as he fired. "Sarge, we've got them on the run!"

"Like I couldn't tell," Foley said with a smirk. "They're retreating! Keep hitting them!"

Parts of the building façades facing the American and Afghani positions crumbled and exploded as the MGS Strykers fired shot after shot of canister rounds into them. The sustained fire drove the survivors back into the alleys. A poor choice considering how long their opponents had to get a general idea of their locations. The canister shells were combined with forty-millimeter and fifty-caliber rounds to scythe apart the fleeing insurgents.

"Don't need to tell me twice," Dunn said as he fired.

His helmet was a bit lighter now with his non-issue optics shot off. Then again, Pro-Tec wasn't exactly issue either. But Dunn always figured that keeping safe from hard knocks was more effective than trying to protect against a shot to the head. He, Foley, and a few SNCOs had gotten dispensation from Hunter Company's Captain Peter Houghton for field use, hence their skateboard gear. It kept his head nice and cool as well. Nothing quite like it for extended patrols.

Dunn dropped another insurgent as he scanned for more targets. Most of them were falling back under the murderous counter-fire. He'd likely accounted personally for a half dozen kills with his rifle. Leaving the combat controller team behind, he stepped out of the hut to get a better view of the area. The insurgents were retreating _en masse_, quickly leaving the opposite shore an abandoned wasteland of fire, rubble, and the occasional body that the fighters couldn't retrieve.

He saw their M104 Wolverine bridgelayer rolling in with an MGS and "vanilla" Stryker as escorts. Looked like they finally found a use for the damned thing after all. Machine guns chased the last of the fighters away as the bridgelayer went to work.

It was like watching a sleeping giant wake and stretch itself. Creeping up to the edge of the broken bridge on squeaking tracks, the Wolverine's spades anchored themselves in the concrete of the bridge even as the Strykers flanking it continued to fire right past it into the city. With laborious slowness the bridge frame's upper section unfolded itself into a position parallel to the bridge. The lower section was then locked into place with equal slowness. If they had been under fire while extending it, Dunn would have bet on having to try wade across the river on account of them losing the bridgelayer. At least the retardation wasn't that bad yet.

Full assembled, the bridge still needed to be put into place. The vaguely trapezoidal shape of the bridge slowly extended from the chassis of what had originally been an Abrams. It bridged the gap in the bridge easily as the Wolverine crew lowered the bridge. Each step of the process took seemingly endless minutes.

"Come on," Dunn muttered, rearranging his magazines as she watched from behind the hut. "Pick it up."

Finally in place, the bridgelayer undocked the extended bridge and rolled across it as if to prove its sturdiness and was joined shortly by its escorts. By then Dunn was already on the move. He'd heard the Humvees rolling up and was making best speed for the stairs up to the bridge proper.

"Hunter Two, we're moving out!" Foley's voice suddenly came. "Bridge is complete! We're on the move!"

"Two-One, on me! We're movin' out!" Dunn shouted, passing a wounded soldier being tended to by a medic as he turned the corner to find four more soldiers sitting at the steps. "That means you too, dumbasses."

Corporals Tom Keating and Harry Macey glanced up from field-stripping a PKM. Or at least Keating did. Macey was eating a Hooah bar and simultaneously showing Ibrahim and Faris, ANA privates, something on his phone, which he had somehow managed to rig up to receive service out in the sticks. Whatever it was was apparently enough to raise both privates' eyebrows.

Dunn shook his head, "What the hell were you doing? Texting your girlfriend? What the hell is this?"

"Yeah, yeah, don't let that rank get to your head," Macey said, pocketing his phone.

Prodding them with his boots, Dunn continued up the stairs to get to the arriving Humvees. Some of the Rangers just didn't seem to let the active warzone get through to them. What were they doing?

"Hi, honey, I got uh, bullets flying by my head," Dunn muttered loudly enough for the others to hear. "I miss you," he concluded. "Send my love to momma!"

Keating obviously heard when he tried to muffle snorted laughter. They emerged to see the first of the Humvees roll up to the newly lain bridge. The shattered pavement crunched like gravel under their boots, spent slugs and casings glittering from between the pieces of concrete and asphalt. Soldiers hobbled past, assisting others and being assisted to the waiting transport. A thin haze of powdered stone hung in the air, irritating noses and eyes.

Walking alongside the Humvees, Dunn let out a low whistle as he ran a gloved hand over the bullet-scarred armor plating. It felt and looked like lunar rock. Windows had been spider-webbed with cracks if not outright shot out. It seemed as if their rides had taken more damage waiting for them than they had passing through the earlier ambush. The ANA soldiers that emerged from the vehicles looked shaken as well.

"Let's go, let's go!" Ramirez's voice suddenly arose from the muddled talk between the soldiers and the rumble of the HMMWV engines. "Battalion's on the move!"

When he emerged from the crowd, the private didn't look much worse for the wear than before he'd been clipped. With a slightly dusty field dressing cinched around an arm, he was grinning and carrying an M4 in his unwounded hand as he walked closer. A bright orange sticker attached to the collar of his vest told Dunn everything he needed to know. Goddamn wardrug.

"Get in the vic, Ramirez," Dunn said, grabbing his shoulder and propelling him toward their Humvee once he was in range. "_In_ the vic, not on the gun."

"Yeah, sheesh, I get it, Corporal," Ramirez said with an overly dramatic sigh as he pulled open the door to get in. "Hey, what's up, Rafiq?" he said to the ANA sergeant sitting behind the wheel.

Heaving the door shut, Dunn walked around and opened the driver's door and waved for the sergeant to get out. Propping a boot on the side of the Humvee, he looked up and down the convoy.

"Come on… Sarge, Dunn. Where are you?" he asked, toggling his radio while leaning on the open door.

"One vic back," Foley responded after a moment. "Problem?"

Dunn leaned back to see his sergeant standing next to Hunter 2-1's other Humvee with a split crew of Tenth Mountain and ANA soldiers checking over a map. "Negative, it's nothing. We ready to move out?"

"Almost," Foley said. "Waiting on that fire mission. And Allen."

_Christ, Allen?_

Dunn didn't like to point fingers, but if there was ever a case of a Section Eight in their company, it had to be PFC Joseph Allen. And he wasn't talking "Howling Mad Murdock" Section Eight. Allen was a useful sort of guy to have in a fight. Rock solid when the bullets were whizzing past. But he tended to be _aggressive_. And his aggression tended to manifest itself at inconvenient times. Sometimes Dunn wondered if the private would have any compunctions about shooting anyone if the rules of engagement allowed it. And he never seemed to be able to keep on-schedule with shit. On the other hand he was a shitload more reliable right now than Ramirez's wardrugged-up self.

"Jesus Christ," Dunn grumbled, drumming his fingers on the wheel. "Those flyboys were right over us. Where the hell are they _now_? I could hump in the C-4 myself and blow the goddamn building up faster."

"Unless you've got some super-duper armor suit, I don't think so, Corporal," Foley's voice came in over the headset. Dunn jolted back, flushing red when he realized he had been holding down the transmit key of his comms rig. "And your jarhead vest doesn't count," Foley said after a moment of consideration.

Settling back into his seat, he pulled one of his Kerlix pouches free and reattached it to the back of his vest. Another piece of non-regulation kit on Dunn's part. One of the Marines who had been at Phoenix had forgotten to bring it with him when he was cycled out. Seemed like a waste of a good set of plates, so Dunn had managed to wheedle Houghton to look the other way at least for the length of the deployment.

Finding Foley's industrial-sized bag of Skittles, he pulled it over and poured out a handful.

"Hey, dude, you're set, right?" he asked Ramirez as he popped the candies one by one into his mouth.

"Just fine, man," Ramirez said, idly picking at his dressing.

Dunn nodded and sighed. "Yeah, well, brace for further retardation. And don't pick at the damn thing."

This hurry up and wait bullshit was killing him…

* * *

"Authorization is confirmed. You are cleared hot on target, Devil One-Two. One JDAM."

"Copy, Warlord," Captain Parker Caesar said. "One JDAM. Commencing run."

The F-15 Strike Eagle came in from a steep angle, nose pointed at the target building. This wasn't exactly rocket science but Caesar liked making visual confirmation before dropping a building buster. The coordinates were already programmed with the coordinates provided by their spotter on the ground before he had even made visual contact with the target. Ever since Showali Kowt nearly a decade and a half ago, and particularly after a nasty blue-on-blue in Ma'a in the Azadi Republic, CAS birds were supposed to be make personal confirmation before dropping ordnance.

"Weapons tight," Caesar said when he spotted the building.

"Confirm, weapons tight," First Lieutenant Hale Peters confirmed.

They were committed now. And the insurgents were about to get another case of nasty death from above.

* * *

"Hey, what's up, Dunn?" Allen's voice said from behind Dunn as he got into the Humvee. "Sarge, Ramirez," he said, likely nodding to the other two occupants of the vehicle.

Well, finally PFC Psycho was in the vic. Dunn tightened his grip on the wheel and leaned forward. Next to him, Foley was glassing the town ahead. He didn't seem to register Allen getting into the vehicle.

"Ten seconds," Dunn heard over the radio and echoed as he reached to grab Foley's bag of candy again. "Allen, get in the turret."

Foley smacked his hand away as he took the bag himself. "About time," he muttered before hefting the bag. "Corporal Dunn, what did I say about taking my goddamn Skittles?"

"It's okay if you don't see it?" Dunn asked with a broad shit-eating grin.

* * *

"Which building is it, sir?"

Sawyer glanced over at Killian when he asked the general. Shepherd hadn't said as much as a single word after giving the order to keep moving. The old man looked almost like a weatherworn statue. It was times like this where he looked his age. Like he had already lost everything worth living for.

"It's that tall one at one o'clock," Sawyer responded, resisting the urge to tack a "dumbass" at the end of the statement.

Standing by the Stryker, the air smelt of sweat, dust, and burnt plastic. Their rifles were still warm to the touch as they waited.

"They're rolling in," Sergeant Ybarra reported suddenly from inside the Stryker. "Ten seconds!"

* * *

"Hey, which building is it?" Specialist Anthony Tsetsang asked as he panned his fist-sized camcorder over Asadabad.

"The one at one o'clock, numbnuts," Specialist Boyd DeWitt said, turning from checking out the Ranger HMMWV in front of them. He squinted at the skyline of the town. "The tan one, right? Yo, Dave! Which building is it? Right or left?"

One Humvee back, Specialist David Ness flipped them off. "The one on the left!" He shouted back.

Part of the Tenth Mountain Spec 4 Mafia, the three of them had also gone through the University of Chicago in the same class. Their classes in film, business management, and history seemed a world away now. Maybe two worlds, considering Korengal. It was pretty country for sure. But lonely. Especially when you were manning outposts that were supposed to have been abandoned half a decade ago. But there they were. Ass end of nowhere with people taking potshots at them whenever it suited them. Life sucks. Wear a helmet.

"Ten seconds to impact!" Staff Sergeant Robert Howell called over the radio. "Air Force is rolling in!"

* * *

"Hey, wait a second," Ramirez said from his seat, suddenly sobering. "Isn't this danger close for the task force?"

"Come on, Private," Dunn said, craning his head backwards to look at him from his seat. "Since when did Shepherd ever give a tug about danger close?"

Foley frowned, digging through some of the debris that littered the dashboard. An elbow slid out and jabbed Dunn in the ribs as he continued searching. He didn't particularly approve of Dunn's habit of criticizing the old man. But a bitching Ranger was a happy Ranger. And right at that moment Foley wasn't particularly happy.

"Dunn, you or Ramirez see who was in the Humvee when it came up?" he asked, sitting back.

"Yeah, Rafiq was driving. Problem?" Dunn asked.

"I think he might've stolen our dip."

Dunn smacked the wheel hard. "Mother_fucker_."

* * *

The Joint Direct Attack Munition is in truth an add-on rather than an actual weapon system. It consisted of a tail section with the necessary control surfaces as well as a guidance package to direct said control surfaces. This guidance package was linked to a satellite GPS and an inertial guidance system, which made it accurate to well under five feet with recent developments. But the add-on is exactly that: something added. What it is added _to_ is the important bit.

In this case the Air Force ground crew had strapped the JDAM guidance package to a MK-38 unguided general-purpose bomb. Filled with four hundred and forty-five pounds of Tritonal, it packed a nasty punch. Having its designation changed from the MK-38 to the GBU-32 changed none of that effectiveness. It merely focused it.

The combat controllers who had sent in the coordinates for the strike had unknowingly placed the bulls-eye twelve stories over the tank in the basement that supplied the building with gas. Which meant that when the JDAM burrowed through a dozen floors, and past a fair share of very surprised Caliphate fighters, the resultant explosion was even greater than what they had been expecting. The metal tank had been torn apart like tissue paper by the impact of the JDAM, releasing its contents into the air to be ignited. The thousand-pound bomb's fuze registered the impact and sent the appropriate signal in the form of a current into the Tritonal. The sudden decomposition of four hundred and forty-five pounds of the high explosive was more than sufficient to ignite the propane.

To an observer outside of the building, it would have seemed as if the base of the apartment building had bulged outwards in a thunderous roar. Bricks and plaster flexed and broke as the first three floors tried and failed to accommodate the still-growing fireball within. By then any hypothetical observer would have been flattened by the blast and likely crushed by falling debris. The fireball tore through the upper floors like a ravenous beast, incinerating anyone unlucky to be left alive after the initial blast. The shockwave and overpressure shattered all of the windows in Asadabad, effectively cleaned the streets around the epicenter of anything lighter than a fully-grown man, set off car alarms, and caused a fair number of nose-bleeds among the population.

The apartment building had been fairly close to the shoreline. Which meant that the dust and debris kicked up by the shockwave did not have far to travel before they hit the front of the military convoy waiting on the bridge for a go order. It washed over them like a hot dusty blanket, pelting anyone exposed with detritus and dust. The Rangers and Tenth Mountain infantry being believers of there being no such thing as overkill loved every minute of it.

* * *

"Hell yeah!" DeWitt whooped, punching a fist into the air.

Their Humvee rocked with the blast. Even with the extra armor they could feel it move. The dust cloud washed over them, pebbles and larger rattling over the bullet-scarred paneling of the vehicle. It was as if the sun had been blotted out for a second as the cloud blocked out all light coming in through the windows.

As the cloud dissipated, the convoy could see what destruction they had called down on the heads of the insurgents. Thick black smoke rose to the clouds marking where the apartment was. As they watched, the gutted building seemed to shudder. It started with the furthest corner of the building, crumbling and collapsing inwards with a plume of dust. As if that were the trigger, the rest of the apartment came tumbling down.

"Look, the building's going down!" Ness shouted.

One moment the apartment had been practically intact. The next it had begun to collapse rapidly in a wave. From the crumbling corner, the collapse grew. Fractures rippled in waves across the building as previously-load-bearing supports found themselves inadequate. The waves traveled the whole building as the walls seemed to fold inward. And then the apartment building disappeared, collapsing on itself. Rising in its place was a plume of dust. A single JDAM had done the job of a dozen skilled demolitionists in bringing the building down on itself. Not precisely cost-efficient, but certainly flashy.

"Definitely got that on the reel," Tsetsang called, keeping his camcorder aimed at the space where the building used to be.

"Keep dreaming, Spielberg," DeWitt said as he grabbed the wheel again. "We're moving out."

"Seriously, man, that was extreme!" Tsetsang said as he pulled his carbine up. "'Course I doubt you'd know anything about that topic."

"Somehow I doubt that."

* * *

Author's Rant: Sorry it's up a whole lot later than I'd promised. Exams, work, etc. found a way to interfere with my writing. Either way, consider it a Christmas present. If you're wondering, yes, I'm altering doctrine a bit further to better-suit the realities of the world of Modern Warfare. The ANA in this story have not had their AKs replaced with M16s, while the Rangers have been mostly issued Mk 17s for their deployment into Korengal from 2015 to 2016, which is another point of divergence from reality. Comments, criticism, and critiques are always welcome and serve to motivate me to update the fic faster.

Update: While working on the next chapter, I was reminded: This story should be considered the sequel to "How It Begins" despite the fact that they are being written concurrently. Call me ambitious.


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